The thirteen stories in Chris Tarry’s richly imagined debut, How To Carry Bigfoot Home, lay bare the insurmountable forces that determine who we are and who we become. From an out-of-work dragon-slaying father in “Here Be Dragons” to a family arguing aboard a rocket ship in “Topics in Advanced Rocketry,” the stories use fantastic settings, blazing wit, and imaginative circumstances to explore very human truths. The stories work to reconcile the public self with the private heart—to contemplate the monsters we carry home and lay bare for the ones we love the most.

“Chris Tarry’s stories come at what we might call The Problem of Men as Boys from all possible angles, from a hapless medieval stay-at-home Dad who’s running a con game out of his one-room hovel to a Bigfoot who’s a sad failure as a creative writing teacher. These stories hilariously and poignantly evoke the way, when it comes to relationships, all men are living under a leaky thatched roof with winter on the way, always believing they’re on the edge of a turnaround, even though failure keeps returning like an old friend back in town.” —Jim Shepard, Story Prize-winning author of You Think That’s Bad and Project X

“Short stories are on the rise again, they never should have been thrown to the wayside in the first place, and this collection shows us the beauty of the story, what happens when you hit the perfect note and make a whole room fall silent.” — Nick Sweeney, Atticus Review.